Cosmic Nebulas Dazzle in New Space Telescope Photos

NASA's WISE infrared
telescope, which recently celebrated the one-year anniversary of its
launch into space, has returned some stunning photos lately.

The new pictures
from WISE  short for Wide-field
Infrared Survey Explorer, which launched
on Dec. 14, 2009  are dramatic, colorful images of interstellar
clouds of gas and dust called nebulas.

Thefirst
photo depicts a structure known as the Flaming Star
Nebula, which is about 1,500 light-years away in the constellation
Auriga. At the nebula's heart is the star AE Aurigae, which appears
to be ablaze, hence the name.

AE Aurigae is a
so-called runaway star, researchers said. It was likely born in the
Trapezium Cluster, in the constellation Orion, but was booted out by
a collision with a binary star system about 2.5 million years ago.

The enhanced colors
seen in the image represent specific wavelengths of infrared light,
which unaided human eyes cannot see. Hot stars scattered throughout
the nebula show up as blue and cyan. Glowing gas appears green, while
heated-up dust is primarily red, researchers said.

ThisWISE
photoshows the Jellyfish Nebula  also
known as IC 443  which is about 5,000 light-years away from Earth,
in the constellation Gemini. The jellyfish shape is a shell
surrounding the remnants of a massive star that exploded 5,000 to
10,000 years ago, researchers said.

This huge
supernova blast sent out shock waves that heated up
surrounding gas and dust, forming the shell, researchers said. The
different colors  again, representations of various infrared
wavelengths  result from differences in the energy intensity of the
shock wave, and light emissions by disparate materials.

Thismosaic
image features three nebulas
that are part of the giant Orion Molecular Cloud, about 1,500
light-years from Earth. The image covers an area of the sky about
three times as high and wide as the full moon, researchers said.

The Flame Nebula is
the huge, luminous structure in the center of the image. What makes
it shine so brightly is Alnitak, the blue star to the right of the
central cloud. The Horsehead Nebula is also visible, as a faint bump
on the lower-right side of the vertical dust ridge, researchers said.

The third nebula,
called NGC 2023, can be seen as a bright circle in the lower half of
the image. In the image, blue represents light emitted at 3.4-micron
wavelengths, mainly from hot stars. Relatively cooler objects, such
as the dust of the nebulas, appear green and red. Green represents
4.6-micron light and red represents 12-micron light, researchers
said.

Thisfinal
photo shows the nebula IC 2944, also known as the
Lambda Centauri, or Running Chicken nebula. It's about 5,800
light-years from Earth, in the constellation Centaurus.

The nebula is a
stellar nursery, home to a new cluster of stars born from the cloud
about 8 million years ago, researchers said. In the picture, blue and
cyan represent infrared light with wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6
microns, which is mostly light from stars. Green and red represent
wavelengths of 12 and 22 microns, which is mostly light from warm
dust; red signals temperatures lower than green.

The large, green
ring-like structure near the middle of the image is about 77
light-years across, researchers said. It's formed by the combined
winds of the young stars blowing back the material from which they
were born.

Since its launch,
the WISE telescope has catalogued hundreds of millions of asteroids,
stars and galaxies.

In late September,
after covering the sky about 1 1/2times, WISE ran out of the coolant needed to chill its infrared
detectors.

The spacecraft is
still scanning the heavens with two of its four detectors, operating
under an extended
mission called NEOWISE. NEOWISE focuses
primarily on comets and asteroids, including near-Earth objects  bodies whose orbits pass relatively close to Earth's orbit around the
sun.